I think we should get some of the facts straight first ....
A CD song is as JohnnyG described ..... An Analog to Digial conversion sampled at 44.1Khz with a depth of 16 bits. This is then encoded onto a CD as basically a .WAV file. There is NO compression applied to the data (that is all it really is at this point). If the CD is made from a digital recording, then it will be resampled to the CD standard.
A LOSSLESS encoder will that this data and compress it so that the orginal data can be retrieved WITHOUT any data loss. Usually you will save about 1/2 the space. This is exactly the same way WinZip works. Some examples are APE, WMA, etc
A LOSSY encoder will compress the data but when expanded MAY NOT be the same as the original. Many factors play in when using this type of compression ie bit rate, file size, etc. Examples of these are MP3, MEG-2, JPEG, MPEG-4, WMA, etc. The intelligence of the encoder also plays an inprotant role in this ie the Lame encoder is renowed for it encoding ability.
Once a file gets encodered, downloading the file, copying the file, e-mailing the file will never change the original quality of the recording. Re-encoding may introduce errors on top of errors which may futher reduce the quality. For example, encode a WAV file to 320 VBR MP3 will sound every bit as good as the orginal but be 1/3 the size. Then encode this to 128bit for a music player. This file will not be as good as encoding from WAV to 128 bit. Why?? We are resampling the resampled 320bit which already has errors.
For myself, I use 320 Variable Bit Rate MP3 encoded with the Lame encoder. I cannot tell the difference between it and the orginal on my system. For portable MP3 players, I re-encode to 96 bit from my 320 VBR encoding.
A CD song is as JohnnyG described ..... An Analog to Digial conversion sampled at 44.1Khz with a depth of 16 bits. This is then encoded onto a CD as basically a .WAV file. There is NO compression applied to the data (that is all it really is at this point). If the CD is made from a digital recording, then it will be resampled to the CD standard.
A LOSSLESS encoder will that this data and compress it so that the orginal data can be retrieved WITHOUT any data loss. Usually you will save about 1/2 the space. This is exactly the same way WinZip works. Some examples are APE, WMA, etc
A LOSSY encoder will compress the data but when expanded MAY NOT be the same as the original. Many factors play in when using this type of compression ie bit rate, file size, etc. Examples of these are MP3, MEG-2, JPEG, MPEG-4, WMA, etc. The intelligence of the encoder also plays an inprotant role in this ie the Lame encoder is renowed for it encoding ability.
Once a file gets encodered, downloading the file, copying the file, e-mailing the file will never change the original quality of the recording. Re-encoding may introduce errors on top of errors which may futher reduce the quality. For example, encode a WAV file to 320 VBR MP3 will sound every bit as good as the orginal but be 1/3 the size. Then encode this to 128bit for a music player. This file will not be as good as encoding from WAV to 128 bit. Why?? We are resampling the resampled 320bit which already has errors.
For myself, I use 320 Variable Bit Rate MP3 encoded with the Lame encoder. I cannot tell the difference between it and the orginal on my system. For portable MP3 players, I re-encode to 96 bit from my 320 VBR encoding.
